So without further waiting... here is my first post of the trip, please keep in mind it is on an english keyboard with a spanish driver so to give you an idea of what i am dealing with.... shift 1234567890 comes out as ª"/()¡!¿?₧ and thats only on this paticular keyboard... everyone i have used seams to be different.
So i spent the past week in a community called Demajagua. And for those of you who dont know that is where DREAMS@MAC was last year. It was amazing going back to a town I had been to before I had never had that expereince. I handed out pictures to people, and saw the finished house that we started last year. Which was a very rewarding feeeling. When you come on a trip for a week you never get to see the finished product with someone actually living in it so that was a real treat.
The man on the far left is the one who lives in this paticularily small house alone. The man in the middle bartino helped build with us last year and now has a house of his own which he shares with his sister and her family.For the DREAMERS from May you will be happy to know there are many new houses complete in the town, about 5 of them. I took a picture of the city from up high.
The house on the closer side of the road is Yeiri's (the 16 year old who pines for me). And you can see about 4 new houses from this view. The house we stayed in last year is just behind a tree on the far right, and our work site this year is middle left up the hill on the opposite side as most the houses. It was same as always work laying bricks mostly.
Habier looking quite grown up.
Jose Luis is the first person I met last year in Demajagua. I asked him how he was and he said terrible... his entire family was dead and he had walked all the way here from haiti and was all alone. He is still very much alive, quite homeless, slightly crazy and strangly good spirited.
Anice and the little girl from the town store.
Anice Domingo is a deaf mute who lives in Demajagua. He is now going to school in Ocoa. He asked about everyone from the trip last year and almost killed me with laughter when he asked about Nicco by making his eyes small and doing karate moves. He thinks nicco looks like jackie chan.
I only spent two days actually working. We did not get up the mountain until Tuesday and I had food poisoning from eating oysters at the beach on the weekend. So i spent Tuesday in bed. Wednesday was a holiday and my group went up the mountain and got insanly drenched by rain and insanley dirty and quite literally nearly fell off the side of the mountain in a small truck. I slept in until i felt better. After which, I proceeded to sit on porches and drink with Dominicans. But on thursday and friday i worked really hard, well half of friday we did go home in the afternoon. Oh well... on a side note here is an exceprt from my journal regarding oysters:
Food poisoning = almost over.... next time you are at a beach and a stranger offers you oysters, decline. He is most likely an assassin or robot sent from the future to destroy you.
On the final day I was hanging out with a new friend named Yobert... he is actually Yeiri's brother. I went to see his house his baby and his pregnant wife. It was very very modest, and i felt a real connection to him.. like sometime in the future i might be struggling to do the canadian equivilant. He was always so nice to me during the week and his family was really ncie to me last year. Anyways, I asked him why he had a motercycle in the middle of his kitchen/livingroom/den/diningroom, and he told me it had broken and he needed a new part for it which costed about 1000 pesoes. A quick calculation in my head told me that equals a weeks wages for him.. or a case of beer in canada for me. I gave him the money and he almost died of shock, he thanked me and his wife thanked me and i left with the smug feeling of being a slightly better human being some other lesser human being. A feeling well worth 40 dollars.
Yobert and Yeiri.... awesome people
Cocao our foreman... his name means chocolate
Wakki0 (pronounced warkio) pretends to be a deaf mute when infront of haitians or other people he does not like. Has the funniest laugh ever....
Los Alemdoros... this is a bad picture of the view i am going back to next week.... be jealous.... or come to the DREAMS trip in may.Overall i feel amazing. I know have a proper place to stay on the weekends with all my stuff... so i am no longer moving all my stuff all the time. I am getting used to cold showers... (no me and steph are fine, i mean there is no hot water here and i always have to have cold showers) the people here are so nice to me and because i stick out so much the all remember me and I often have people showing up wherever I am saying they heard i was around and they came to visit me. I am having a great time here but I obviosly miss all of you so much. I will try to post pictures on facebook next week, I figure you have all the DREAMS@MAC pictures to look at for now to hold you over. We will see what happens, computers here are made out of wood and only take punch cards as input... try blogging in binary its hard!
Johnny: If i can find a way to get this 20 ft sign on the plane... this is what i want to bring back for you.Miss you all
- Mikey, Mehow, Miguel
